


diner's choice

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: Sportsfest 2018 [47]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Sportsfest 2018, liminal spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 13:31:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15730398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: The neon lights outside the diner blink. In the empty space where the wineglass was, another cup of coffee appears. Kita picks it up and sniffs at it, but Atsumu already knows what it is.i'll search the universe/till i find you again





	diner's choice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sportsfest 2018 Bonus Round 4: Caps | [originally posted here](https://sportsfest.dreamwidth.org/11674.html?thread=2368666#cmt2368666)

The first cup of coffee tastes like sludge.

Atsumu coughs and sets it down on the saucer, a muttered curse cut off between his lips. From across the table, Suna is staring at him.

“Are you done?” he asks.

“Do I look like I’m done?”

“You look like you don’t like the coffee.”

Atsumu stares down at the cup again. It’s a jade-green ceramic, roughly glazed, with a chip on the rim where he’d dropped it on the floor. They’d been fighting and he’d got carried away, waved a hand a little too violently and knocked it off the counter, and Osamu had rolled his eyes and stalked out of the kitchen and left Atsumu to pick up the broken cup.

“Leave me alone,” Atsumu says to Suna. “You’re not even really here. I’m not even really here.”

Suna smiles so that his teeth are showing for a moment, an image Atsumu would as soon forget he ever saw, and he slides the saucer over. “Drink up,” he says, and then he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

The fifth cup of coffee tastes like raspberries.

“Sour,” Atsumu murmurs, to no one in particular. He is alone at his usual booth in the diner. Through the dusty glass, he can see the sunset, clouds the colour of tea and rust. The fading light blossoms like a watercolour painting, a splotch that someone made by accident and left to flourish in its own messy way.

“Do you think he’ll come today?”

Atsumu groans softly and rests his head on his forearms. “I don’t know, Kita-san,” he mumbles. “Why are you here?”

Kita collects all of Atsumu’s empty cups and stacks them to one side. A porcelain-white one that came from a cheap hotel, a shotglass that still contains the last dregs of a sweet affogato, a wineglass that was never meant to hold wine.

He folds his hands together, lets the silence drag out a little too long before he asks, “Do you think he’ll come if you wait long enough?”

Atsumu clenches one fist closed and imagines he is waking up.

The neon lights outside the diner blink. In the empty space where the wineglass was, another cup of coffee appears. Kita picks it up and sniffs at it, but Atsumu already knows what it is.

“I think this is for you,” says Kita. “It smells like pudding.”

 

* * *

 

The twelfth cup of coffee tastes like melting snow.

Atsumu swallows it, feels the back of his throat go numb, and turns to look out the window. The last time he was here, it had been the height of summer, too hot to do anything but drink up and drift off into a nap, but now there is a scarf round his neck and he’s wearing a light grey sweater that isn’t his.

It is warm indoors, or maybe it’s just the sweater. Atsumu stretches his arms overhead, yawns and picks at a frayed thread on his sleeve, absently at first, then with mounting annoyance. It’s tickling his wrist and it won’t snap off cleanly.

 _How like Osamu._ A voice like an echo, but when he looks up, there’s no one sitting across from him. The diner is empty today. How like Osamu, to wind himself round his finger like a thread he cannot break; how like Osamu, to linger in the aftertaste of twelve different cups of coffee and to be all twelve flavours at once.

Atsumu stands up. Slowly, he makes his way to the door, takes a deep breath and opens it. Behind him, he hears the clinking of a teaspoon and the soft hiss of a coffee machine. He knows there will be another cup on the table if he looks back.

He does not look back.

Overhead, a bell rings. There is a blanket of white at Atsumu’s feet and a figure down the road, walking away. He steps out over the threshold. The snow is melting in the pit of his stomach. He does not look back, but if he did, he would have seen the diner disappear into the winter, little patches of sunlight and daisies springing up where his footsteps were.


End file.
